To the sweet-gale meadow or swamp up Assabet.

December 31. 

Thermometer at 7.45 a. m., -1°, yet even more vapor is rising from the open water below my boat's place than on the 29th, when it was -15°. 

The wind is southwesterly, i. e. considerably south of west. This shows that fog over the water is a phenomenon of the morning chiefly, as well in winter as in summer. You will see a fog over the water in a winter morning, though the temperature may be considerably higher than at midday when no fog is seen. 

There has evidently been a slight fog generally in the night, and the trees are white with it. The crystals are directed southwesterly, or toward the wind. I think that these crystals are particularly large and numerous, and the trees (willows) particularly white, next to the open water spaces, where the vapor even now is abundantly rising. 

Is this fog in the night occasioned by the cold earth condensing the moisture which a warmer wind has brought to us?

At 10 a. m., thermometer 18°.

December 30, 2018

I see no vapor from the water. 

Crows yesterday flitted silently, if not ominously, over the street, just after the snow had fallen, as if men, being further within, were just as far off as usual. This is a phenomenon of both cold weather and snowy. You hear nothing; you merely see these black apparitions, though they come near enough to look down your chimney and scent the boiling pot, and pass between the house and barn. 

Just saw moved a white oak, Leighton's, some five inches in diameter, with a frozen mass of earth some five or five and a half feet in diameter and two plus thick. It was dug round before the frost, — a trench about a foot wide and filled with stalks, etc., — and now pried up with levers till on a level with the ground, then dragged off. It would not have cost half so much if a sloping path had been dug to it on one side so that the drag could have been placed under it in the hole and another dug at the hole it was removed to, — unless the last were planked over and it was dragged on to it. 

They were teaming ice before sunrise (from Sam Barrett's Pond) on the morning of the 29th, when the thermometer was 16 or 20 degrees below. Cold work, you would say. Yet some say it is colder in thawing weather, if you have to touch the ice. 

P. M. — To the sweet-gale meadow or swamp up Assabet. 

I notice that one or more of the terminal leafets remain on the branches of the flowering fern commonly. 

See where probably a shrike (do I ever see a small hawk in winter ?) has torn a small bird in pieces and its slate-colored down and its feathers have been blown far and wide over the snow. 

There is a great deal of hemlock scales scattered over the recent snow (at the Hemlocks), evidently by birds on the trees, and the wind has blown them south east, — scales, seeds, and cones, — and I see the tracks of small birds that have apparently picked the seeds from the snow also. It may have been done by gold finches. I see a tree sparrow hopping close by, and perhaps they eat them on the snow. Some of the seeds have blown at least fifteen rods southeast. So the hemlock seed is important to some birds in the winter. 

All the sound witch-hazel nuts that I examine are empty. 

How vain to try to teach youth, or anybody, truths ! They can only learn them after their own fashion, and when they get ready. I do not mean by this to condemn our system of education, but to show what it amounts to. A hundred boys at college are drilled in physics and metaphysics, languages, etc. There may be one or two in each hundred, prematurely old perchance, who approaches the subject from a similar point of view to his teachers, but as for the rest, and the most promising, it is like agricultural chemistry to so many Indians. They get a valuable drilling, it may be, but they do not learn what you profess to teach. They at most only learn where the arsenal is, in case they should ever want to use any of its weapons. The young men, being young, necessarily listen to the lec turer in history, just as they do to the singing of a bird.

They expect to be affected by something he may say. It is a kind of poetic pabulum and imagery that they get. Nothing comes quite amiss to their mill. 

I think it will be found that he who speaks with most authority on a given subject is not ignorant of what has been said by his predecessors. He will take his place in a regular order, and substantially add his own knowledge to the knowledge of previous generations. 

The oblong-conical sterile flower-buds or catkins of the sweet-gale, half a dozen at the end of each black twig, dark-red, oblong-conical, spotted with black, and about half an inch long, are among the most interesting buds of the winter. The leaf-buds are comparatively minute. The white edges of their scales and their regular red and black colors make the imbrication of the bud very distinct. The sterile and fertile flowers are not only on distinct plants, but they commonly grow in distinct patches. Sometimes I detect the one only for a quarter of a mile, and then the other begins to prevail, or both may be found together. It grows along the wet edge of banks and the river and in open swamps. 

The mulleins are full of minute brown seeds, which a jar sprinkles over the snow, and [they] look black there; also the primrose, of larger brown seeds, which rattle out in the same manner. 

One of the two large docks, perhaps obtusifolius, commonly holds its seeds now, but they are very ready to fall. (Mainly one-seeded; vide three-ribbed goldenrod meadow.) 

There appears to be not much (compared with the fall) seed left on the common or gray goldenrod, its down being mostly gone, and the seed is attached to that.

Potentilla Norvegica appears to have some sound seed in its closed heads. 

The very gray flattish heads of the calamint are quite full of minute dark-brown seed. 

The conical heads of the cone-flower also are full of long blackish seeds. Both the last drop their seeds on being inverted and shaken. 

I see also the yellow lily (L. Canadense) pods with its three now gray divisions spreading open like the petals of a flower, and more than half the great red flattish triangularish or semicircularish seeds gone. The pod boys throw with a humming sound. 

Even the sidesaddle-flower, where it shows its head above the snow, now gray and leathery, dry, is covered beneath its cap with pretty large close-set light-brown seeds. 

I see one or more sedges with seeds yet, one apparently the Carex debilis, if it is not flava? 

A man may be old and infirm. What, then, are the thoughts he thinks? what the life he lives? They and it are, like himself, infirm. But a man may be young, athletic, active, beautiful. Then, too, his thoughts will be like his person. They will wander in a living and beautiful world. If you are well, then how brave you are! How you hope! You are conversant with joy! A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as his brain. We exaggerate the importance and exclusiveness of the headquarters. Do you suppose they were a race of consumptives and dyspeptics who in vented Grecian mythology and poetry? The poet's words are, "You would almost say the body thought!" I quite say it. I trust we have a good body then.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 31, 1859

Thermometer at 7.45 a. m., -1°, yet even more vapor is rising from the open water . . . wind is southwesterly, i. e. considerably south of west. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The weather, New Year's Eve

There has evidently been a slight fog generally in the night, and the trees are white with it. The crystals are directed southwesterly, or toward the wind. See December 31, 1855 ("It is one of the mornings of creation, and the trees, shrubs, etc., etc., are covered with a fine leaf frost, as if they had their morning robes on, seen against the sun. There has been a mist in the night . . . This accounts for the frost on the twigs. It consists of minute leaves, the longest an eighth of an inch, all around the twigs, but longest commonly on one side, in one instance the southwest side.")

Crows yesterday flitted silently, if not ominously, over the street. See December 15, 1855 ("How like a bird of ill omen the crow behaves!") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

They were teaming ice before sunrise (from Sam Barrett's Pond) on the morning of the 29th, when the thermometer was 16 or 20 degrees below. See  January 10, 1859 ("At Sam Barrett’s Pond, where Joe Brown is now get ting his ice, I think I see about ten different freezings in ice some fifteen or more inches thick. Perhaps the successive cold nights might be discovered recorded in each cake of ice."); January 30, 1854 (Sometimes one of those great cakes of green ice from Walden or Sam Barrett's Pond slips from the ice-man's sled in the street and lies there like a great emerald, an object of interest to all travellers)

There is a great deal of hemlock scales scattered over the recent snow (at the Hemlocks), evidently by birds on the trees. See January 14, 1857 ("Up Assabet on ice . . . Hemlock seeds are scattered over the snow."); January 20, 1860 ("The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels. What a bountiful supply of winter food is here provided for them!") See also November 1. 1853 ("As I paddle under the Leaning Hemlocks, the breeze rustles the boughs, and showers of their fresh winged seeds come wafted down to the water and are carried round and onward in the great eddy there.") and note to October 13, 1859 ("The hemlock seed is now in the midst of its fall, some of it, with the leaves, floating on the river. The cones, being thus expanded, are more conspicuous on the trees.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at the Leaning Hemlocks

Sweet-gale grows along the wet edge of banks and the river and in open swamps. See November 29, 1857 (" Going through a partly frozen meadow . . .i, scraping through the sweet-gale, I am pleasantly scented with its odoriferous fruit."); December 19, 1850 ("I find the sweet-gale (Myrica) by the river also."); December 14, 1850 ("I find a low, branching shrub frozen into the edge of the ice, with a fine spicy scent . . .. When I rub the dry-looking fruit in my hands, it feels greasy and stains them a permanent yellow, which I cannot wash out. It lasts several days, and my fingers smell medicinal. I conclude that it is sweetgale, and we name the island Myrica Island."); January 31, 1854 ("In the winter, when there are no flowers and leaves are rare, even large buds are interesting and somewhat exciting. I go a-budding like a partridge. I am always attracted at this season by the buds of the swamp-pink, the poplars, and the sweet-gale.");  February 9, 1854 ("I have brought home some alder and sweet-gale and put them in water.") See also April 13, 1860 (“It distinctly occurred to me that, perhaps, if I came against my will, as it were, to look at the sweet-gale as a matter of business, I might discover something else interesting.”) and note to April 30, 1852 ("The sweet gale is in blossom.")

The sidesaddle-flower, where it shows its head above the snow. Sarracenia purpurea, also known as the purple pitcherplant or northern pitcher plant, the only pitcherplant native to New England. See note to June 12, 1856 ("Sidesaddle flower numerously out now.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

The poet's words are, "You would almost say the body thought!" I quite say it. See November 9, 1851 ("Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought -- with these I deal."); See also September 2, 1851 ("Expression is the act of the whole man.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world.

Elegy on Mistress Elizabeth Drury

By John Donne (1572–1631)

SHE, of whose soul, if we may say, ’twas gold, Her body was the Electrum, and did hold Many degrees of that; we understood Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,         5 That one might almost say, her body thought.

The spring note of the nuthatch.

March 5. 

Going down-town this forenoon, I heard a white-bellied nuthatch on an elm within twenty feet, uttering peculiar notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it. [Also the 21st March.] There was a chickadee close by, to which it may have been addressed. 

It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker! (This is before I have chanced to see a bluebird, blackbird, or robin in Concord this year.) It is the spring note of the nuthatch. 

It paused in its progress about the trunk or branch and uttered this lively but peculiarly inarticulate song, an awkward attempt to warble almost in the face of the chickadee, as if it were one of its kind. It was thus giving vent to the spring within it. 

If I am not mistaken, it is what I have heard in former springs or winters long ago, fabulously early in the season, when we men had but just begun to anticipate the spring, — for it would seem that we, in our anticipations and sympathies, include in succession the moods and expressions of all creatures. 

When only the snow had begun to melt and no rill of song had broken loose, a note so dry and fettered still, so inarticulate and half thawed out, that you might (and would commonly) mistake for the tapping of a woodpecker. As if the young nuthatch in its hole had listened only to the tapping of woodpeckers and learned that music, and now, when it would sing and give vent to its spring ecstasy and it can modulate only some notes like that, that is its theme still. That is its ruling idea of song and music, — only a little clangor and liquidity added to the tapping of the woodpecker. 

It was the handle by which my thoughts took firmly hold on spring. This herald of spring is commonly unseen, it sits so close to the bark. 

P. M. — Up river to Well Meadow. The snow melts and sinks very rapidly. This spring snow is peculiarly white and blinding. The inequalities of the surface are peculiar and interesting when it has sunk thus rapidly. 

I see crows walking about on the ice half covered with snow in the middle of the meadows, where there is no grass, apparently to pick up the worms and other insects left there since the midwinter freshet. We see one or two little gnats or mosquitoes in the air. 

See a large light-colored hawk circling a long time over Fair Haven Hill, and another, probably its mate, starts away from Holden Wood and circles toward it. The last being nearest, I distinguished that its wings were black tipped. (I have no glass ) What can they be? I think that I have seen the same in previous springs. They are too light-colored for hen-hawks, and for a pair of marsh hawks, — being apparently alike. Then the fish hawk is said by the books not to get here nearly so early, and, beside, they would not circle about so much over the hill. 

The goshawk, which I next think of, has no black tip to wings that I can learn. May it not be the winter hawk of Wilson? for he says its primaries are black at the tips, and that [it] is lighter than the red-shouldered, of same species. 

At the same time I see a crow going north or northeast, high over Fair Haven Hill, and, two or three minutes after, two more, and so many more at intervals of a few minutes. This is apparently their spring movement. 

Turkeys gobble in some distant farmyard at the same time. 

At length the sun is seen to have come out and to be shining on the oak leaves on the south side of Bear Garden Hill, and its light appears to be exactly limited to them. 

I saw on the ice, quite alive, some of those black water-beetles, which apparently had been left above by a rise of the river. Were they a Gyrinus? 

When I was last at Well Meadow, I saw where apparently a dozen hounds had all crossed the brook at exactly one point, leaving a great trail in the slosh above the ice, though there was but one track of a man. It reminded me of a buffalo-trail. 

Every half-mile, as you go up the river, you come to the tracks of one or two dogs which have recently crossed it without any man. 

Those skunk-cabbage buds which are most advanced have cast off their outmost and often frost-bitten sheaths, and the spathe is broader and slightly opened (some three quarters of an inch or more already) and has acquired brighter and more variegated colors. The out side of the spathe shows some ripeness in its colors and markings, like a melon-rind, before the spadix begins to bloom. 

I find that many of the most forward spathes, etc., have been destroyed since I was here three days ago. Some animal has nibbled away a part of the spathes (or sometimes only a hole in it) — and I see the fragments scattered about — and then eaten out the whole of the spadix. Indeed, but few forward ones are left. 

Is this a mouse or musquash? or a bird ? The spadix is evidently a favorite titbit to some creature. 

That more entire-leaved plant amid the early skunk- cabbage which I called a cress on the 3d has the bitter taste of cress. The common cress has in one place grown considerably, and is fresh and clean and very good to eat. I wonder that I do not see where some creatures have eaten it. 

The sweet-gale brush seen in a mass at a little distance is considerably darker than the alders above it. This will do for the sweet-gale maze in November. 

The cowslip there is very prominently flower-budded, lifting its yellow flower-buds above water in one place. The leaves are quite inconspicuous when they first come up, being rolled up tightly.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 5, 1859

"The notes of the White-breasted Nuthatch

are remarkable on account of their nasal sound.

Ordinarily they resemble the monosyllables

hank, hank, kank, kank;

but now and then in the spring,

they emit a sweeter kind of chirp,

whenever the sexes meet,

or when they are feeding their young.”

( J. J. Audubon)

Notes and more like a song than I remember to have heard from it. There was a chickadee close by, to which it may have been addressed. See January 5, 1859 ("I hear a fine busy twitter, and, looking up, see a nuthatch hopping along . . . and then it utters a distinct gnah, as if to attract a companion. Indeed, that other, finer twitter seemed designed to keep some companion in tow, or else it was like a very busy man talking to himself. The companion was a single chickadee, which lisped six or eight feet off.. . .And when the nuthatch flitted to another tree two rods off, the chickadee unfailingly followed.")

It was something like to-what what what what what, rapidly repeated, and not the usual gnah gnah; and this instant it occurs to me that this may be that earliest spring note which I hear, and have referred to a woodpecker! See March 13, 1853 ("Excepting a few blue birds and larks, no spring birds have come, apparently. . . .But what was that familiar spring sound from the pine wood across the river, a sharp vetter vetter vetter vetter, like some woodpecker, or possibly nuthatch?"); February 17, 1855 (" Hear this morning, at the new stone bridge, from the hill, that singular springlike note of a bird which I heard once before one year about this time (under Fair Haven Hill). . . Can it be a jay? or a pigeon woodpecker? Is it not the earliest springward note of a bird?”); February 18, 1857 ("When I step out into the yard I hear that earliest spring note from some bird, perhaps a pigeon woodpecker (or can it be a nuthatch, whose ordinary note I hear?), the rapid whar whar, whar whar, whar whar, which I have so often heard before any other note.”);  March 17, 1857 (" I notice that woodpecker-like whar-whar-whar-whar-whar-whar, earliest spring sound."); March 18, 1857 ("I hear the faint fine notes of apparent nuthatches coursing up the pitch pines, a pair of them, one answering to the other, as it were like a vibrating watch-spring.Then, at a distance, that whar-whar whar-whar-whar-whar, which after all I suspect may be the note of the nuthatch and not a woodpecker."); March 20, 1858 ("I hear now, at 7 A. M., from the hill across the water, probably the note of a woodpecker, I know not what species; not that very early gnah gnah, which I have not heard this year.").; March 25, 1859 ("P. M.— To Clamshell. I heard the what what what what of the nuthatch this forenoon. Do I ever hear it in the afternoon ? It is much like the cackle of the pigeon woodpecker and suggests a relation to that bird. “); April 25, 1859 ("I hear still the what what what of a nuthatch, and, directly after, its ordinary winter note of gnah gnah, quite distinct. I think the former is its spring note or breeding-note.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,The Nuthatch

I see a crow going north or northeast, high over Fair Haven Hill, and, two or three minutes after, two more, and so many more at intervals of a few minutes. See March 5, 1854 ("See crows, as I think, migrating northeasterly. They come in loose, straggling flocks, about twenty to each, commonly silent, a quarter to a half a mile apart, till four flocks have passed, perhaps more. Methinks I see them going southwest in the fall.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

I distinguished that its wings were black tipped. (I have no glass ) What can they be? Compare March 27, 1855 (“See my frog hawk. . . .It is the hen-barrier, i.e. marsh hawk, male. Slate-colored; beating the bush; black tips to wings and white rump."); March 30, 1856 ("See probably a hen-hawk (?) (black tips to wings), sailing low over the low cliff next the river, looking probably for birds. [May have been a marsh hawk or harrier.]" ) May 14, 1857 ("See a pair of marsh hawks, the smaller and lighter-colored male, with black tips to wings, and the large brown female, sailing low over J. Hosmer's sprout-land”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

White-bellied nuthatch –

its peculiar note addressed

to the chickadee.

A mackerel sky.

January 19. 

Wednesday. P. M. —To Great Meadows 'via Sleepy Hollow. 

It is a remarkably warm, still, and pleasant afternoon for winter, and the wind, as I discover by my handkerchief, southwesterly. 

I noticed last night, just after sunset, a sheet of mackerel sky far in the west horizon, very finely imbricated and reflecting a coppery glow, and again I saw still more of it in the east this morning at sunrise, and now, at 3.30 P. M., looking up, I perceive that almost the entire heavens are covered with a very beautiful mackerel sky. 

January 15, 2014 2:57 P.M.

This indicates a peculiar state of the atmosphere. The sky is most wonderfully and beautifully mottled with evenly distributed cloudlets, of indescribable variety yet regularity in their form, suggesting fishes’ scales, with perhaps small fish-bones thrown in here and there. It is white in the midst, or most prominent part, of the scales, passing into blue in the crannies. 

Something like this blue and white mottling, methinks, is seen on a mackerel, and has suggested the name. Is not the peculiar propriety of this term lost sight of by the meteorologists? 

It is a luxury for the eye to rest on it. What curtains, what tapestry to our halls! Directly overhead, of course, the scales or cloudlets appear large and coarse, while far on one side toward the horizon they appear very fine. It is as if we were marching to battle with a shield, a testudo, over our heads. 

I thus see a flock of small clouds, like sheep, some twenty miles in diameter, distributed with wonderful regularity. But they are being steadily driven to some new pasture, for when I look up an hour afterward not one is to be seen and [the] sky is beautifully clear. 

The form of these cloudlets is, by the way, like or akin to that of waves, of ripple-marks on sand, of small drifts, wave-like, on the surface of snow, and to the first small openings in the ice of the midstream. 

I look at a few scarlet and black oaks this afternoon. Our largest scarlet oak (by the Hollow), some three feet diameter at three feet from ground, has more leaves than the large white oak close by (which has more than white oaks generally). As far as I observe to-day, the scarlet oak has more leaves now than the black oak. 

Gathered a scarlet oak acorn with distinct fine dark stripes or rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has. 

By the swamp between the Hollow and Peter’s I see the tracks of a crow or crows, chiefly in the snow, two or more inches deep, on a broad frozen ditch where mud has been taken out. The perpendicular sides of the ditch expose a foot or two of dark, sooty mud which had attracted the crows, and I see where they have walked along beneath it and peeked it. Even here also they have alighted on any bare spot where a foot of stubble was visible, or even a rock. 

Where one walked yesterday, I see, notwithstanding the effect of the sun on it, not only the foot-tracks, but the distinct impression of its tail where it alighted, counting distinctly eleven (of probably twelve) feathers,—about four inches of each, — the whole mark being some ten inches wide and six deep, or more like a semicircle than that of yesterday. 

The same crow, or one of the same, has come again to-day, and, the snow being sticky this warm weather, has left a very distinct track. The width of the whole track is about two and three quarters inches, length of pace about seven inches, length of true track some two inches (not including the nails), but the mark made in setting down the foot and withdrawing it is in each case some fifteen or eighteen inches long, for its hind toe makes a sharp scratch four or five inches long before it settles, and when it lifts its foot again, it makes two other fine scratches with its middle and outer toe on each side, the first some nine inches long, the second six. 

The inner toe is commonly close to the middle one. It makes a peculiar curving track (or succession of curves), stepping round the planted foot each time with a sweep. You would say that it toed in decidedly and walked feebly. It must be that they require but little and glean that very assiduously. 

The sweet-fern retains its serrate terminal leaves. 

Walking along the river eastward, I notice that the twigs of the black willow, many of which were broken off by the late glaze, only break at base, and only an inch higher up bend without breaking. 

I look down the whole length of the meadows to Ball’s Hill, etc. In a still, warm winter day like this, what warmth in the withered oak leaves, thus far away, mingled with pines! They are the redder for the warmth and the sun. 

At this season we do not want any more color. 

A mile off I see the pickerel-fisher returning from the Holt, taking his way across the frozen meadows before sunset toward his hut on the distant bank. I know him (looking with my glass) by the axe over his shoulder, with basket of fish and fish-lines hung on it, and the tin pail of minnows in his hand. The pail shines brightly more than a mile off, reflecting the setting sun. He starts early, knowing how quickly the sun goes down. 

To-night I notice, this warm evening, that there is most green in the ice when I go directly from the sun. There is also considerable when I go directly toward it, but more than that a little one side; but when I look at right angles with the sun, I see none at all. 

The water (where open) is also green. 

I see a rosy tinge like dust on the snow when I look directly toward the setting sun, but very little on the hills. Methinks this pink on snow (as well as blue shadows) requires a clear, cold evening. At least such were the two evenings on which I saw it this winter.

Coming up the street in the twilight, it occurs to me that I know of no more agreeable object to bound our view, looking outward through the vista of our elm lined streets, than the pyramidal tops of a white pine forest in the horizon. Let them stand so near at least.

H. D Thoreau, Journal, January 19, 1859

Our largest scarlet oak (by the Hollow), some three feet [in] diameter at three feet from ground. Compare November 9, 1860 ("To Inches’ Woods in Boxboro . . .the trees which I measured were (all at three feet from ground except when otherwise stated) : a black oak, ten feet circumference,. . .scarlet oak, seven feet three inches, by Guggins Brook.")

Gathered a scarlet oak acorn with distinct fine dark stripes or rays, such as a Quercus ilicifolia has. See November 27, 1858 (“I find scarlet oak acorns like this

in form not essentially different from those of the black oak”); September 18, 1858 ("the small shrub oak . . .with its pretty acorns striped dark and light alternately”). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau The Scarlet Oak

There is most green in the ice when I go directly from the sun. See January 7, 1856 ("Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it.”);  Compare February 21, 1854 ("The ice in the fields by the poorhouse road — frozen puddles — amid the snow, looking westward now while the sun is about setting, in cold weather, is green.”); December 25, 1858 (“The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast.”) See also  January 24, 1852 (Walden and White Ponds are a vitreous greenish blue, like patches of the winter sky seen in the west before sundown); February 12, 1860 ("Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, When the ice turns green

The sweet-fern retains its serrate terminal leaves. See January 14, 1860 ("Those little groves of sweet-fern still thickly leaved, whose tops now rise above the snow, are an interesting warm brown-red now, like the reddest oak leaves. Even this is an agreeable sight to the walker over snowy fields and hillsides. It has a wild and jagged leaf, alternately serrated. A warm reddish color revealed by the snow.");   January 17, 1858 ("I see a large downy owl's feather adhering to a sweet-fern twig.."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Sweet-Fern

At this season we do not want any more color. See December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau Winter Colors

A mile off I see the pickerel-fisher returning from the Holt, taking his way across the frozen meadows before sunset toward his hut on the distant bank. He starts early, knowing how quickly the sun goes down. See December 23, 1859 ("Even the fisherman, who perhaps has not observed any sign but that the sun is ready to sink beneath the horizon, is winding up his lines and starting for home.. . . In a clear but pleasant winter day, I walk away till the ice begins to look green and I hear it boom, or perhaps till the snow reflects a rosy light") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

I see a rosy tinge like dust on the snow when I look directly toward the setting sun. See January 10,1859 (“This is one of the phenomena of the winter sunset, this distinct pink light reflected from the brows of snow-clad hills on one side of you as you are facing the sun.”); December 21, 1854 ("The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color. "); Decemberr 20, 1854 ("in some places, where the sun falls on it, the snow has a pinkish tinge"); "January 1, 1855 ("We see the pink light on the snow within a rod of us")

I know of no more agreeable object to bound our view . . . than the pyramidal tops of a white pine forest in the horizon. See December 3, 1856 (“The pine forest's edge seen against the winter horizon.”); December 12, 1859 ("The night comes on early these days, and I soon see the pine tree tops distinctly outlined against the dun (or amber) but cold western sky."); December 25, 1858 ("How full of soft, pure light the western sky now, after sunset! I love to see the outlines of the pines against it. . . I enjoy the complexion of the winter sky at this hour.");; January 9, 1859 ("It is worth the while to stand here at this hour and look into the soft western sky, over the pines whose outlines are so rich and distinct against the clear sky."). See also May 8, 1853 ("The pyramidal pine-tops are now seen rising out of a reddish mistiness of the deciduous trees just bursting into leaf. A week ago the deciduous woods had not this misty look,") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines 

January 19. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  January 19

A mackerel sky

far in the west horizon

just after sunset

.

The pyramidal

tops of a white pine forest

in the horizon.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A mackerel sky

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-590119

Four days of fog in midwinter; beauty become visible

January 18. 

January 18, 2019

That wonderful frostwork of the 13th and 14th was too rare to be neglected, —succeeded as it was, also, by two days of glaze, —but, having company, I lost half the advantage of it. 

It was remarkable to have a fog for four days in midwinter without wind. We had just had sudden severe cold weather, and I suspect that the fog was occasioned by a warmer air, probably from the sea, coming into contact with our cold ice-and-snow-clad earth. 

The hoar frost formed of the fog was such a one as I do not remember on such a scale. Apparently as the fog was coarser and far more abundant, it was whiter, less delicate to examine, and of far greater depth than a frostwork formed of dew. 

We did not have an opportunity to see how it would look in the sun, but seen against the mist or fog it was too fair to be remembered. The trees were the ghosts of trees appearing in their winding sheets, an intenser white against the comparatively dusky ground of the fog. 

I rode to Acton in the after noon of the 13th, and I remember the wonderful avenue of these faery trees which everywhere over arched my road. The elms, from their form and size, were particularly beautiful. As far as I observed, the frostwork was deepest in the low grounds, especially on the Salix alba there. 

I learn from the papers that this phenomenon prevailed all over this part of the country and attracted the admiration of all. The trees on Boston Common were clad in the same snow-white livery with our Musketaquid trees. 

Perhaps the most unusual thing about this phenomenon was its duration. 

The air seemed almost perfectly still the first day, and I did not perceive that the frosting lost anything; nay, it evidently grew during the first half of the day at least, for it was cold at the same time that it was foggy.

Every one, no doubt, has looked with delight, holding his face low, at that beautiful frostwork which so frequently in winter mornings is seen bristling about the throat of every breathing-hole in the earth’s surface. In this case the fog, the earth’s breath made visible, was in such abundance that it invested all our vales and hills, and the frostwork, accordingly, instead of being confined to the chinks and crannies of the earth, covered the mightiest trees, so that we, walking beneath them, had the same wonderful prospect and environment that an insect would have in the former case. 

We, going along our roads, had such a prospect as an insect would have making its way through a chink in the earth which was bristling with hoar frost. 

That glaze! I know what it was by my own experience; it was the frozen breath of the earth upon its beard. 

But to remember still that frostwork, I do not know why it should build out northward alone, while the twig is perfectly bare on the south side. Is not the phenomenon electrical? You might Twig have guided your self night or day by observing on which side the twigs it was. Closely examined, it is a coarse aggregation of thin flakes or leafets. 

Standing a little east or west of an evergreen, you saw considerable of its-greenness, especially the second day, when much had fallen; but in each case successively you were agreeably disappointed when you arrived exactly north of the tree and saw it to best advantage. Take the most rigid tree, the whole effect is peculiarly soft and spirit-like, for there is no marked edge or outline. 

How could you draw the outline of these snowy fingers seen against the fog, without exaggeration? There is no more a boundary-line or circumference that can be drawn, than a diameter. 

Hardly could the New England farmer drive to market under these trees with out feeling that his sense of beauty was addressed. He would be aware that the phenomenon called beauty was become visible, if one were at leisure or had had the right culture to appreciate it. 

A miller with whom I rode actually remarked on the beauty of the trees; and a farmer told me in all sincerity that, having occasion to go into Walden Woods in his sleigh, he thought he never saw anything so beautiful in all his life, and if there had been men there who knew how to write about it, it would have been a great occasion for them. 

Many times I thought that if the particular tree, commonly an elm, under which I was walking or riding were the only one like it in the country, it would  worth a journey across the continent to see it. Indeed, I have no doubt that such journeys would be under taken on hearing a true account of it. But, instead of being confined to a single tree, this wonder was as cheap and common as the air itself. 

Every man’s wood lot was a miracle and surprise to him, and for those who could not go so far there were the trees in the street and the weeds in the yard. It was much like (in effect) that snow that lodges on the fine dead twigs on the_ lower part of a pine wood, resting there in the twilight commonly only till it has done snowing and the wind arises. But in this case it did not rest on the twig, but grew out from it horizontally, and it was not confined to the lowest twigs, but covered the whole forest and every surface. 

Looking down the street, you might say that the scene differed from the ordinary one as frosted cake differs from plain bread. In some moods you might suspect that it was the work of enchantment. Some magician had put your village into a crucible and it had crystallized thus. 

The weeping willow, with its thickened twigs, seemed more precise and regularly curved than ever, and as still as if it were carved of alabaster. 

The maples, with their few long shoots, were rather set and still. 

It was remarkable that when the fog was a little thinner, so that you could see the pine woods a mile or more off, they were a distinct dark blue. If any tree is set and stiff, it was now more stiff, if airy and graceful, it was now more graceful. 

The birches especially were a great ornament.

 As usual in the winter, where a rock rises above the ice it was a mere hillock covered with a white counterpane, and often where one end, perhaps the higher, of the rock was' bare on one side it looked like a seal or walrus slowly lifting itself above the surface, or resting there. 

One suggested a bonfire under the elms in the street at night. 


P. M. — Up Assabet to bridge. Two or more inches of snow fell last night. In the expanse this side Mantatuket Rock I see the tracks of a crow or crows in and about the button-bushes and willows. They have trampled and peeked much in some spots under the button-bushes where these seeds are still left and dibbled into the snow by them. It would seem, then, that they eat them. 

The only other seeds there can be there are those of the mikania, for I look for them. You will see a crow’s track beginning in the middle of the river, where one alighted. I notice such a track as this, where one alighted, and apparently struck its spread tail into the snow at the same time with its feet. 

I see afterward where a wing’s quills have marked the snow much like a partridge’s. The snow is very light, so that the tracks are rarely distinct, and as they often advance by hops some might mistake it  for a squirrel’s or mink’s track. 

I suspect that they came here yesterday after minnows when the fishermen were gone, and that has brought them here to-day in spite of the snow. They evidently look out sharp for a morsel of fish.

I see where, by the red maple above Pinxter Swamp, they have picked over the fine dark-greenish moss from button-bush, and the leaves which had formed a squirrel’s nest, knocking it down on to the river and there treading about and pecking a small piece, apparently for some worms or insects that were in it, as if they were hard pushed. 

I am pretty sure to find tracks under the last-named bank, in the edge of the low swamp white oak wood, either of rabbits or mice, crows or fox. The two former generally keep close under the bank, as the safest beat for them, but sometimes I see where they hopped across the river several times last night, and I can imagine how shyly they looked back from the opposite side. The mice occasionally hop out a rod and back, making a semicircle; more rarely quite across. 

In my walk of the 16th, I noticed that almost all the way after leaving the railroad till I reached the high way near Hubbard’s Bridge I was on the track of a fox. My beat was nearly identical with its (or there may have been several), —lengthwise through the Cassandra Ponds and Hollows by the lowest and most open path, along the narrow grown-up hillside path to Pleasant Meadow, and just along the edge of the button bushes, visiting every musquash-house, and crossing the river from time to time. 

I notice in midstream, opposite the cooper’s shore, where an opening has been made for ice, some eighteen feet square, and has not frozen over again, but the water is seen passing with a swift current and disappearing quickly under the thin edge of the newly formed ice. I notice one of those fine unaccountable cobweb like lines, nearly straight though undulating, stretched from side to side of this opening, about eight inches from the edge of the ice on the lower side. 

It looked at first as if the water, compared with the ice, was higher, in fact heaped up at that point on account of the obstruction which the lower side offered, and that it then suddenly descended and passed under the thin edge of the newly formed ice! 

The ridge of the watery dam was a narrow light line, and there were on the upper side, parallel with it, eight or ten other light lines or ripples alternating with dark within the breadth of three or four inches, growing less and less distinct; and on the lower side there was a sudden slope (apparently to the level of the water below) about one inch wide. 

It was remarkable that the current  and all that it carried with it passed incessantly through and over these lines without in the least disturbing them, or rather breaking them, only producing that slight undulation. I describe it as it appears. 

Of the large black oaks on the north bank near Prescott Barrett’s, some are quite bare, others have about as many leaves on their lower parts as a white oak. The swamp white oaks opposite are all bare. I notice in two places where a musquash has been out on the snow-covered ice, and has travelled about a rod or less, leaving the sharp mark of its tail.

To-day, an average winter day, I notice no vapor over the open part of the river below the Island, as I did the very cold afternoon of the 10th. The air and water are probably now too nearly of the same temperature. That, then, in the winter, is a phenomenon of very cold weather.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 18, 1859

That wonderful frostwork of the 13th and 14th. See January 13, 1859 ("There is built out horizontally on the north side of every twig and other surface a very remarkable sort of hoar frost, the crystallized fog, which is still increasing.. . . already full an inch deep on many trees, and gets to be much more, perhaps an inch and a half even, on some in the course of the day. It is quite rare here, at least on this scale."); January 14, 1859 ("The fog-frosts and the fog continue . . . The fog turns to a fine rain at noon, and in the evening and night it produces a glaze,")

When the fog was a little thinner, so that you could see the pine woods a mile or more off, they were a distinct dark blue. Compare January 18, 1852 ("The pines, some of them, seen through this fine driving snow, have a bluish hue.") See also note to January 13, 1859 ("The woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color")

I see the tracks of a crow or crows in and about the button-bushes and willows. I notice where one alighted, and apparently struck its spread tail into the snow at the same time with its feet. See January 19, 1859 ("Where one walked yesterday, I see, notwithstanding the effect of the sun on it, not only the foot-tracks, but the distinct impression of its tail where it alighted, counting distinctly eleven (of probably twelve) feathers,—about four inches of each, — the whole mark being some ten inches wide and six deep, or more like a semicircle than that of yesterday.")

In my walk of the 16th, I noticed that almost all the way after leaving the railroad till I reached the high way near Hubbard’s Bridge I was on the track of a fox. My beat was nearly identical with its (or there may have been several), —lengthwise through the Cassandra Ponds and Hollows by the lowest and most open path. See December 25, 1858 ("I notice that a fox has taken pretty much my own course along the Andromeda Ponds.")

A musquash has been out on the snow-covered ice, and has travelled about a rod or less, leaving the sharp mark of its tail. See January 3, 1860 ("[Melvin] speaks of the mark of the tail, which is dragged behind them, in the snow."); February 28, 1857 ("I see the track, apparently of a muskrat (?), — about five inches wide with very sharp and distinct trail of tail, — on the snow and thin ice over the little rill in the Miles meadow.") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

January 18.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 18; also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau Between me and the sky. 

Beautiful frostwork,

the earth's breath made visible,

covers the forest.

The distinct dark blue

of pine woods seen through thin fog

a mile or more off.

 Crow tracks – One begins

in the middle of the river

where it alighted.

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Four days of fog in midwinter 

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2026